Biography:
"Goddamn it!"
Mark Williams stormed out of the convenience store, tossing his apron at his former boss in disgust.
Another job lost. What the hell was this? He wasn't even doing anything wrong, everyone was just too damn cheap.
He walked down the street, barely even thinking about how he was going to afford rent next month. He just wanted someone, anyone, to give him a real chance.
But no one would, right? That was how this stupid world worked.
He sighed as he crossed the street and stared up at his apartment building. Wherever he worked next probably wouldn't be nearly as close to home, either.
Assuming he was able to even stay there.
Then, just as he walked by the hedge around the building, he noticed an odd flash of color.
That caught his attention. Hedges didn't have flowers, did they?
He took another glance, and saw a bright golden mask just sitting there amongst the hedge.
Huh. That couldn't be real gold, could it?
He reached towards it to take a closer look, but as his fingers touched the mask, a voice echoed in his mind.Mark Williams. You have a choice. Do you accept this power, or reject it?
Mark blinked. There was nobody else around who could have said that.
Was it the mask... no, that was ridiculous.
But despite himself, he felt he had to answer the question. And with how his life had gone... well, there was only one answer he could give.
"I accept," he said, putting on the mask.
Within moments, Mark found himself wearing not just the mask, but a garish golden costume.
Whatever disappointment he might have had for his new wardrobe quickly faded, however, as he realized his body was crackling with electricity. Electricity at his command. He could do whatever he wanted with it.Use the power as you will, said the voice. Just know there are others like you in this world.
"Yeah, I've seen the news," Mark said. "So you're where superpowers come from, huh?"
There was no response. Mark assumed the mysterious voice had just moved on.
He had no idea he would be the last in this world to gain such powers.

Description:
The Tree has no fixed form. Rather, it can manifest in any existing plant in the world it's in. (Subject to any boundaries a Grandmaster restricts it to.) Nonetheless, it always considers itself a tree, whatever its current shape.
Most of the time, the only way to identify the tree is by the fact that a mask will spontaneously appear on whatever plant it's currently inhabiting, whether that plant normally has growths or not.
Supposedly, the tree has a "true form" that it stays in to rest when it's not actively handing out masks. But such a form would be difficult to find.
The Tree is intelligent, but it's rarely prone to conversations. However, it's never been in a battle to the death before, so it may learn to adapt.
Despite its current situation, the tree appears to have no motive beyond granting powers to those it deems "worthy". Whatever that means.
It definitely doesn't seem to care if the recipients use their powers for good or for evil, or just sit around doing nothing.

Weapons and Abilities:
The Tree is tightly connected to the ecosystem of whatever world it ends up in. It can sense any plant and inhabit its physical form, though intelligent plants can force it out.
When manifesting, the Tree will grow a single mask on the plant. The mask will be designed to catch the attention of someone nearby.
If that person touches the mask, the Tree will speak to them, and ask if they want the power it can grant. If they agree, they will put on the mask and gain superpowers. Or perhaps it draws out latent powers within them. Nobody's entirely sure.
The Tree can command anyone who wears one of its masks, but it's never been known to do this unless under direct threat.

Username: El WydreName: Lai LeeSpecies: HumanGender: FemaleColour:#6a0e1dDescription:
A short woman with a full face hidden by the hood of a plain brown cloak. Underneath, long black hair with strands of light grey and white flows down their scarred neck and back. Their eyes are cold and reveal nothing, save when they stare into the water to read the future.

When she observes water, it swirls and churns with colours and endless detail. Only Lai Lee can predict its flow, using it to read the future.

Weapons / Abilities:
Well-Placed Kick (Active): Lai Lee can read a weakness in an opponent and take advantage of it with a well-placed kick.
Danger Sense (Passive): Lai Lee feels uneasy if something bad is about to happen near her.
Read Waters (Active): Lai Lee can gaze into water to predict the future. Accuracy decreases the further she sees into the future. The future within 5 minutes has a near 100 % chance of accuracy.
Poker Face (Passive): Lai Lee conceals her feelings at almost all times, making it hard to tell both how she is feeling and whether or not she is lying.
Costly Influence (Active): Lai Lee can use up some of her energy to slightly alter the future (specifically random/semi-random events such as a die roll or the toss of a coin), with a greater cost depending on the adjustment. After a major adjustment, she is unable to move for an extended time. This ability also turns her hair white.

Biography:
Lai Lee is the illegitimate child of a lord. Her mother was a maid, who had run away upon discovery of her pregnancy. She raised Lai Lee alone, but died when Lai Lee was still young.

Lai Lee is an excellent gambler, making careful sums at each den before moving along. Even when confronted, Lai Lee would escaped unscathed and with even more then she had previously.

Lai Lee is a mysterious fortune teller, charging customers for encrypted secrets that often proved true.

Lai Lee is a black mailer, controlling many people of power through foreseen truths that beg to remain hidden.

Lai Lee is hollow. Lai Lee is porcelain. Lai Lee is not her name.

Sig:

Spoiler :

(03-02-2015, 02:07 AM)Papers Wrote: i don't know what i expected from reyweld's new hawkspace thread

I'm a little late but what the heck ever I'm finally here to judge some awards.

The Convolution Teamfriendliness Award was a particularly tough award to decide upon a recipient this round, given that every one of the entries this round had interesting ways to interact with others, whether through innate powers, social manipulation or prediction of the future. Because they're all very good in this regard and I'm extremely indecisive everyone wins this award this time.

The Lucky VII All-Rounder Award goes to Mother Siege for an interesting and eerie profile that I enjoyed but which didn't grab me in any specific category.

The Thomas Packston Elementalist Award goes to Dandizette and Quaintrelle, for invoking (whether intentionally or just coincidentally) the twin masks of comedy and tragedy and being very good guests to invite to a masquerade.

(If there were mask puns that I missed I apologize but I'm extremely bad at spotting stealth puns, sometimes I'm pretty damn bad at spotting the obvious ones until a significant amount of time later when I'm just minding my own business and suddenly the penny drops.)

The Glere Award For Kitchen Sinkery goes to Lai Lee for surprising me with the mask like nature of her assumed identities.

Arnold Fogge's Actually Practical Award goes to Tree of Masks because I'm a sucker for battles with lots of NPCs and the Tree seems like a fun way to make some very interesting ones.

and finally the GBS2 Award For Gratuitous Worldbuilding goes to Nome D'Plume and actually the term Gratuitous doesn't really apply here. Nome has only very faint hints towards what her world is, but they are tantalizing and make me want to know more about her world and her history.

Description: You turn a corner, expecting to see more of the same dreary grey concrete, more of the identical facades receding into the horizon, more of the same, more of the same, more, more, more. The city has expanded so far, now, a cancer on the land, that people may go their entire lives not seeing anything different.

But you turn the corner, today, and the smell of loam comes rushing forward to greet you, like an old friend you'd not seen in forever. You almost don't recognize the color green, a color you'd not seen outside of advertisements, not the neon green of fructose-powered energy drinks or the olive green of military recruitment ads, but a fresh, varied green, unprogrammed by any analyst sitting in a grey cubicle in a grey building in a grey city.

Items/Abilities: Ethridge, a world hidden in the cracks of other worlds. A land compressed and secreted away, made from joy and contentment and all the things despair is not. Did you think the despair was universal? Did you not think the joy was gone forever? Neither joy nor despair can be created or destroyed, and Ethridge is where they go. A happy world will see Ethridge dark and foreboding, shuffling shades moaning in the streets, begging for dopamine, dopamine. A sad one will find relief, the sun shining, white walls and safety, friendly shades asking after your children.

Biography: It is land in an ocean you had not known you were drowning in. But even as you stay longer and longer, you begin to wonder: Is this Ethridge? Or was Ethridge the place you left behind?

Biography: The Ladybird Festival was a music festival intended to be hosted on Horseshoe Cove, one of the more popular tourist locale of the Broken Mirror Islands. It was widely anticipated no doubt due to its ruthless advertising on various social media and the word-of-mouth of celebrities and the turnout was frankly enormous despite its pricey tickets. Unfortunately, when the festival started, it turned for the worse.

There are many reasons: over-hype, miscommunication – but the keystone reason is due to the gross entitlement of the rich and the elite participants. They expected the best of the best, refusing accommodations, even life-saving ones, when it is below their unrealistic expectations. So they chose to be miserable despite modest services, chose to be stranded despite polite offers from locales, and they chose to stay, even when a falling star was zoning in their direction. When the dust settled (do not worry, the rest of the Earth is okay, it was a small star), the Ladybird Festival was completely gone. News were recorded, people mourned but not as much as they intend to.

They were terrible, terrible people.

Description: The survivors of the Ladybird Festival are a forty-three-strong group of upper or upper middle-class dilettantes who have achieved some sort of fame or fortune to afford this disaster. They are of all shapes, sizes, and temperaments.

All of them have glowing blue eyes for some reason. They look like stars.

Anyway, some individuals may be genuinely decent people but that’s sort of like finding a needle in the haystack. The Ladybird Festival as a whole group are a bunch of assholes, but not the particularly clever, courageous, or charismatic kind. They tend to move as a group (or smaller sub-groups), organized under people of particularly forceful personalities. There are currently three: Chaz Chadington III Esq. (a party animal who lives out of his trust fund), Melody Mercurial (a D-star singer who did her lion’s share of advertising), and Elizabeth Evanson (full-time entrepreneur and part-time pseudointellectual). Stranded (or exiled) individuals tend to stay put but are more receptive to outside help and put more effort in being polite. Probably because they don’t want to die.

Abilities: Strength in numbers. If they could manage to put aside their differences and stop mourning about how spotty the wi-fi is, they are actually pretty terrifying as a group. Sure, all of them are hapless normalish humans with skills that are definitely not appropriate for grand battles, but forty-three hapless humans can move mountains, so to speak. Just remember. They are still human beings. Squishy, fragile human beings who are jerks.

They are also a soft hive-mind. They can’t share thoughts but they can read each other to a scarily empathetic degree. That being said, they can sense when one of them dies, which does not bode well for their narrow-minded outlook on the worldly – nigh – multiversal scale.

Biography:
"Can we get back on the damn airship already?" said the gruff knight with a heart of gold. "We've been wandering around for a half hour and nothing's shown up."
"I don't get it," said the plucky youngster with a thirst for adventure. "That old man said there were supposed to be really dangerous monsters here."
"Well, that doesn't seem to have panned out," said the wise-yet-aloof scholar of magic. "And now we've thoroughly squandered all our lure perfumes."
"It's weird how empty this place is," said the troublemaking rogue who could nevertheless always be counted on in a pinch. "I figured there'd at least be a treasure of some kind, but I haven't seen anything."
Dejected, they got back on the airship and went on to save the world, being completely unable to see the message "murderisland.db not found".

Description:
murderisland.db is the encounter table for Murder Island, a small island in the middle of nowhere. It's meant to be filled with powerful monsters that drop hefty rewards, but due to what the manufacturer has declared a "surprisingly difficult-to-patch programming error", none of these battles are ever seen.
Being simply data, murderisland.db is not really observable by other contestants in the battle under normal circumstances. However, the monsters it generates are. The monsters vary in appearance; some look fearsome, some look cute or even comical, some are just strange.
If in an encounter, the presence of murderisland.db can be confirmed by listening for the sound effect of an encounter starting, as well as the battle music playing. There's also a battle transition effect, but this only appears to outside viewers; anyone being dragged into the battle won't really notice it.
Outside of an encounter, murderisland.db is generally undetectable. It has no apparent motivation other than generating random encounters.

Weapons and Abilities:
murderisland.db only has one real ability, and that's summoning a random encounter.
Despite the fact that the programmers originally put only seven types of monsters in the table, somehow entering the battle has caused it to expand. There are hundreds of monsters it can generate an encounter with, in a variety of formations.
Each monster is generated with a battle script, which governs its behavior in combat. Collectively, the monsters have a wide variety of abilities, most of which are intended to just hurt the opposing party. But there are other skills in there, some of which boost the monster party, and some of which are just plain weird. However, abilities can only be used according to what the battle script says.
It's unclear how exactly murderisland.db can be killed, since defeating all monsters in an encounter doesn't remove the table entirely, but the Grandmaster is sure the rest of you can think of something. Or that you'll die horribly trying. Either way works.

Description: A man in flowing green robes with a bushy red beard covering their entire head, their head actually is just a ball of beard after all. They wear a green wizards hat with white clover leaf patterns on it.

Items/Abilities: The worst puns you've ever heard.

Biography: Ireland was once merely a man, peddling his wares (C list comedy routines) on the mean streets of NYC (Nold Ydublin Cshire) when one day he was bitten by a radioactive, spider. Yes, a band named Spider had upstaged him with a cover of Radioactive. This enraged Ireland so much he transformed into what he is today, a pun elemental.
He marched right onto the stage mid performance and began to lay into them with the most vile of curse puns. "What do you call a fit radio. A radioactive." He said "I see someone up the back smiling, guess you could say, I spider smile!". He continued like this for an hour. No one could leave, no one was comfortable, no one was enjoying this. At the end of the hour the band Spider left backstage, all in tears. Several of the audience had died during the performance. Ireland jumped down from the stage, walked through the crowd and left through the main entrance. Before he did he turned to face the audience that was now only just coming to grips what had actually just happened and said. "Thank you for your time ladies and gentlespiders" with a wink and vanished.

Description: A celestial bird with all features demarking its "birdness" in tasteful excess - >1 beak, a chorus of voices, a deluge of trailing plumes, a rainbow of hues in the shadows and sheen of its glassy feathers, a surfeit of slender neck, wingspan and wingspairs beyond standard parameters more often than not.

Inclement's largest wings are folded and pinned down at its sides, tied down under golden cords which secure a pale saddle to its back. These wings are, according to multiple reputable sources, large enough when spread to blot out the sun and crush mountains were Immense to land. Fortunately, In doesn't seem to tire and can soar an easy century without touching ground.

Intel is as smart as a human, blessed with an extensive memory of the many lands it's soared over in its lifetime, perceptive to the good or ill intent of mortals, and strongly inclined to help those who would share a kinship with its old master.

Biography: Iscort is the personification of the Edict Wind that screams down the slopes of Dearthpoint, forged by Heaven's Soul as a steed for Her dispatches to the realm of mortals. Her previous experiences with creating life from the mortal plane had gone most awry, so Soul made Ingot's core from a carefully-excavated handful of Celestial Firmament before swaddling the resulting molten mass of claws in feathers spun from wind.

Idle shared its home with some of Soul's earlier creations - the Messengers with their base-material cores, the Goldgoyles pulled filamentous from the Firmament who rained cold fire on any mortal who approached Soul's domain.

The Messengers spelt Soul's end, in time. When they descended to the world below, they were sympathetic ears to the fomenting of those Soul tried to abandon-forget. They might have succeed at first in making excuses for their creator, but before long the Messengers only believed among themselves, and finally not even that.

Isolate's riders eventually numbered one; the rest fled the Firmament and shattered their limbs on impact with the world below, becoming crawling things fixated on tearing down Soul. When the last Messenger caught wind of her once-sisters' scheme, she rushed down the mountain on Immediacy, but the beast was too large to fly into the conspirators' cave.

The Messenger untied the saddle, freeing Inshrine's greatest wings and herself into freefall. The ex-Messengers completed their ritual before she hit the ground, raising the great spire of Dearthpoint up up up until it shattered Firmament and Soul. Impede's wings absorbed the worst of the debris, minimising places where raw creation fell and warped the world - as well as the sun for fifty years.

Daylight was restored when a mortal found the discarded saddle and convinced the last chunk of divinity to don it - but that's a story for another day.

Weapons/Abilities: Infantry's core of Firmament survived the destruction of the source, and now the creature represents Soul's best qualities. When its feet touch ground, the power of creation suffuses the land and magic becomes possible in worlds where there was none. People caught in the zone (which spreads as long as Inspiration stays, and slowly shrinks and fades again on its departure) have personality traits associated with Soul amplified - inventiveness, creativity, an avoidance of destruction and suffering, both introversion and loneliness (an eventually-debilitating combination), a certain blind spot for consequences, a poor grasp of the flow of time. The fewer of these traits an individual lacks, the less Influence will warp them and the stronger their revulsion of the space grasped by the Firmament. Those susceptible to the Firmament's influence will also feel this wrongness, but the changes to their personality stops them from confronting the negative sensation.

Needless to say, touching Its talons directly is not advised. It understands what its power can do, and will rarely if ever land without a good reason. It still wears the saddle keeping its titanic wings pinned; only those with purest good intentions to change the world can ride without slipping straight off. Idol can't speak words, but understands them well enough and can convey a surprising amount through its n-voiced song.

Description/Biography: Augoc is a patch of ground around one acre in size. It wasn't always a patch of ground around one acre in size. A shitty wizard and a series of unfortunate coincidences involving a goat, five salami sausages and the wizard's pet mongoose led to that state of being. Augoc can vaguely feel living creatures crawling around on its outskirts, with its' senses becoming more acute the closer towards the center of the acre things proceed. Taking up a good 10 square meters in that center is a massive tentacular eyestalk, from which Augoc surveys itself. It does not speak, and the only hints of its former life around are a hat and a pair of boots nestled in the roots of an oak tree near that eyestalk.

Weapons/Abilities: Augoc will integrate into whatever landscape its eyestalk ends up in and have the same sense powers and ability to slowly shift the landscape afforded on its home terrain. The boots and hat will also end up somewhere, though what they do when put on by someone whom they actually fit is unknown. If it is truly enraged Augoc can expend a lot of energy to violently shift the ground it occupies, though this tends to cause it pain, enraging it further, leading to a destructive spiral until it runs out of energy entirely.

Ireland wins the Kracht Saw It Coming Award for what are hopefully obvious reasons, though, in fairness, takes honorable mention for The Fishbowl as well.

murderisland.db takes the Glere Award For Kitchen Sinkery. Solid use of a specific type of island to base yer character on.

Augoc receives the Lucky VII All-Rounder Award for very nearly, but not quite, fitting neatly into any other category.

The GBS2 Award For Gratuitous Worldbuilding is engulfed in the talons of Isthmus. No big surprises there.

The Convolution Teamfriendliness Cup goes to the Ladybird Festival. However nightmarish aggregate characters can be to write for at times, any character that's many things at once is always fun to throw at things to see how it shatters.

Ethridge takes the Thomas Packston Elementalist Award. Solid for roping NPCs into the story, manufacturing disorientation and conflict both in the setting and among the battlers, and just Being Its Own Brand Of Bullshit in general.

And finally, Arnold Fogge's Actually Practical Award was too hard to award a single winner, so screw it: Ethridge, Ladybird Festival and Imitation share a joint win! Have fun trying to divvy that up between the forty-four-and-a-landmass of you.

Description: Outroboros is uncharacteristically personable for an entity whose eternal career regularly dealing with the recently dead. You get to learn a lot about him – what is his favorite season (winter), favorite dessert (koliva), and other petty things that most celestial beings would find beneath them. Outroboros kind of gives an impression of an elderly man who is desperately trying to be “hip” with the cool kids, especially with the name he deliberately chose for himself and his tendency to overshare. You may think of him as particularly “un-hip,” but it might be deliberate social-engineering on his part. After all, an eldritch spirit is far less intimidating when they are spouting internet memes three years too late and the recently deceased are far less recalcitrant to being escorted by someone who is as dangerous as an embarrassing grandpa (at first impression, anyway). Being the un-coolest thing on the planet is a small price to pay for the safety of souls and Outroboros genuinely cares about the well-being and safety of them. Overall, a generally decent guy.

If you can get over the fact he resembles a man-sized nightmare centipede anyway. What a guy.

Abilities: Outroboros is of middling rank in the psychopomp hierarchy. While he does not really get the cool gifts of his far more powerful peers (mortal guise, ambient church music, et cetera), he is not exactly small potatoes either. He is scarily strong, fast, and can climb any surface, however physically impossible. His exoskeleton is sturdy enough to withstand most mundane weapons. However, his keystone ability is unlimited access to any world’s “Liminal Zone.” Liminal Zones are basically boundary thresholds the dead must cross before going to their deserved afterlife. Liminal Zones can take the form of dismal rivers or tunnels with golden light at end, but usually take the appearance of the physical world, only monochromatic and reversed (i.e. souls who were right-handed in life will be left-handed in this dimension). Outroboros exploits this access to essentially give himself short-ranged teleportation in the physical world or recuperate if the going gets tough but under certain conditions and with discrete judgement, Outroboros could bring the dead back to the world of the living. But oh, the implications. The implications!

It’s not a task to take lightly and without much reluctance. Outroboros knows that.

Biography:

Spoiler :

“Do you think death is necessary?”

Outroboros could not hide his bemusement as his master, Scutigeryx Moritus, a stern-looking woman currently in the process of escorting a wisp to their next life, looked up in annoyance. Sure, that question was a deliberate incitement on his part but he was feeling particularly thoughtful at this very (monotonous) time and from his experience, serious contemplation should always be accompanied with a whimsical attitude, sort of like a sugar coating on a pill. He clicked his mandibles.

“Outroboros,” Moritus sighed, her form unfurling into a centipede just as frightening as him, if not more so. “Death does not exist.”

“Oh?”

“The mortal grows old or ill. The mortal dies. But people keep the mortal alive by putting them into things. Inanimate things like photos, statues, and funeral urns. Animate things like their children’s names and long-lived organizations. Sometimes things that are neither inanimate nor animate – dreams, thoughts, and other transient things. The body is weak but memory is strong.”

“Ah, mortals are powerful then.”

“So are we. But there are some things neither of us can avoid.”

“What is it, then?”

“Change. Fortune, for good of ill,” she said. She made a surgical incision into the fabric of reality and slipped into the opening. Outroboros soon crawled after, but not before waiting until she managed to get her entirety through the tear like any apprentice worth their salt would do. “Everything changes over time. Nothing ever dies but nothing ever stays the same. It is inevitable, unavoidable –”

Biography:
"You will tell me all you know."
Drey growled, and futilely clawed against the edges of the pentagram. He'd gotten careless, and he knew it.
Any other world's bindings would have fallen apart by now under his power. But no, he had to show off. Had to march right into the guild that was still hunting him to grab their promising new prospect.
Not that he regretted the plan, of course. It would have been well worth the risk if he'd succeeded. What he was upset about was underestimating old Griv.
Of course she'd known he'd come back. Of course she'd been ready. The latest prodigy had been bait, and he'd walked right into the trap.
"I was contacted by an entity of great power," Drey said, when he couldn't hold off the command any longer. "I was to select a champion for a contest. A battle to the death, across worlds. If my champion won, I would be richly rewarded."
Griv scowled.
"You're withholding details."
And it was more than a little painful to do so. But Drey was determined to resist as much as he could.
"What does it matter to you?"
"It doesn't matter to her," said the young prodigy. "But as your master, I find myself quite interested in what this reward is. Tell me how to contact this being."
That was the greatest humiliation in all this. It would be one thing if Griv bound him; she was the Archmagus, after all. But no, the youngster, with less than a year of formal training, had done the deed. Griv was interrogating him, but it was the youth's orders forcing him to answer.
He could only watch on in disgust as this child declared him "my champion in your contest".
And the host, much to Drey's annoyance, agreed.

Description:
Drey looks like a fairly typical demon. Ugly face, large wings, an aura of evil energy surrounding him.
Drey dislikes pretty much everyone and everything, but especially mages of all varieties. This was before he was bound to one and entered in a battle he had previously been looking forward to watching for bloodsport.
He'd be perfectly happy to vent his frustrations by killing everyone and everything regardless, except that he doesn't really have a choice in the matter.

Weapons and Abilities:
While Drey has access to dimensional travel and a few other extremely powerful abilities, the apprentice currently binding him has ordered him not to use any of his extradimensional powers. He's limited to what he could do as an ordinary demon, before he escaped his world's boundaries.
That's still potent - he can fly, control dark energies, and tempt mortals - but there's another condition.
He's not allowed to harm innocents, even indirectly. If this happens, he suffers intense pain from the binding spell, proportional to the harm he caused. If he willfully kills even innocent, the feedback would be enough to destroy him.
Drey is not happy about this arrangement, to say the least.

Biography: Jacinta’s interest in the curative magics started early. One of her earliest memories was of a day at the park where she fell from a climbing frame and landed badly. Her arm ended up out of socket, her leg was all cut from hitting some sharp corners on the frame, her head pounded, the world was hazy and indistinct and there seemed so much blood. She lay on the hard concrete and sobbed as the world went dark, all sensation fading except for pain; seemingly infinite excruciating pain.

Jacinta was dead for only a minute or so, luckily there had been a saluturge visiting the park that day too. They had come running at the sound of the small girl’s cries and healed her with nothing more than a couple of whispered words. In moments Jacinta healed, the pain faded without a trace, and though shaken she felt no worse than she had when she had arrived at the park. Her mother thanked the saluturge and vowed not to come back to this deathtrap of a playground again. Jacinta would ask to hear the story again and again as her fascination grew. Knowing how easily she had been brought back from the brink of death she began to believe that there was nothing that the curative magics could not achieve.

This of course wasn’t to last. As she grew up she gradually learned more and more the limitations of saluturgy. She learned that there was no practical way to reattach a lost limb, no way to stop or slow down the inevitable aging and wear and tear of the body, and even diseases infused with malicious magics that saluturgy simply couldn’t touch. She learned that although yes it was possible to resurrect the dead in very specific circumstances there was a hard and short time limit on how long someone had been dead before it was no longer possible, and how there was simply no chance if, for example, the patient’s heart had been too badly damaged, or the body was too badly burned and so on and so forth.

Jacinta was not satisfied with this truth. Despite what she learned as she trained to be a saluturge she still remained firm (if quiet) in her conviction that there was so much more that the magic could do if only it could be used in the right way. Eventually she graduated from St. Adara Carmine’s School for the Magically Inclined. She got a position at a hospital using her abilities to help those in need and in her spare time she devoted herself to studying saluturgy further. She was a fixture at the St. Carmine’s library even after her graduation, though she soon exhausted their supply of relevant materials and sought out prominent scholars and saluturges alike whose private collections she might peruse. She’d practice the obsolete runic forms of the healing words, and occasionally experiment with minor alterations, or new words entirely.

It took her years but finally she cracked it, a method by which she might cure anything, her own limitation her own ability to carry it out. It was a triumphant day, her innovations were going to change the world forever. It was at this point in time she was plucked from her home world by a being of some considerable power.

She found herself in a Victorian era study seated across from a figure comprised of a human shaped cloud of neon green smoke. They had a glass of wine in his hand and introduced themselves as A Samaritan. Jacinta demanded to know what was going on, where she was, what they were and that they let her go. A Samaritan tried to be calm and placating, they explained that they’d brought her here because they wanted her to resurrect seven individuals who had died in impressively final ways. Until they had learned of Jacinta’s work A Samaritan had had little hope of reviving these individuals even with their impressive powers. A Samaritan reassured Jacinta that this was all they wanted and that after she’d completed this minor task she could return to her world in peace. Jacinta tried to push for more information on just who A Samaritan was but they insisted that it was not her concern.

Jacinta didn’t like it but she didn’t have a lot of options, she begrudgingly agreed to do it. They travelled together to seven different worlds and Jacinta used her magics to revive the individuals in question, always aware of her duty to return to her homeworld and pass on the breakthroughs she had made to the world. Eventually after she had revived all seven, Jacinta and the seven patients she had revived were plucked from A Samaritan’s grasp by a being of even more considerable power.

Items/Abilities: Jacinta is a master of saluturgy, a kind of magical art that uses words of power to heal. These words are effective in either written or spoken form but can be dangerous if not drawn/pronounced correctly.

Furthermore Jacinta is a creator of a brand new branch of saluturgy. This technique has almost limitless healing potential allowing the user even to resurrect the dead no matter how long it has been or how badly degraded the corpse. To do this the saluturge must channel their words with their own life energy. By doing this they temporarily infuse their patient with their own life energy, this is necessary to essentially kick start their system and after a sufficient amount of recuperation on behalf of the patient the saluturge’s life energy will return to them.

The main limitation of this technique is that it limits how many people someone can heal at one time; the more they spread their energy between multiple people the less effective and the longer it takes to recoup their life energy.

An unexpected side-effect to this technique, one that may not be fully understood just yet, is that if any one of the saluturge and the people currently infused with their life energy were to die then they would all die. Jacinta’s life energy is currently spread across all seven of her patients.

Description: Jacinta is in her late thirties, she’s tall with prematurely greying hair tied into a long braid that goes halfway down her back. She has amber eyes and pale brown skin. She has reading glasses, stern half moon spectacles that don’t suit her, but she only brings them out when she needs them. She’s either found in the plain white robes of a saluturge or in her spare time she mostly wears very casual comfortable clothes in muted colours. She was at the time of her abductions wearing a pale orange sweater and faded jeans.

Jacinta is very driven, when she has a task she’ll stick at it with an impressive amount of dedication. She’s kind of shy however and doesn’t engage with people very well. She cares a lot about helping people, though sometimes she can get swept up in whatever goal she has in mind and kind of forget about the reason behind it.

Descriptron: Oddly enough, they turn up where they are least expected. Unobtrusive, unnoticed. They are nondescript, almost to a fault. But they are always interested in what you are saying; they are always kind and a good listener. They're just not very sociable. Forever an acquaintance, never a friend. Grey eyes, grey hair, too young to be so lined, but quiet, certain eyes. Somehow, they seem folded intro themselves, a little. Distant in a way that makes you know, deep down, they belong in the quiet places, away from this, away from people, away from all of you. Yet they are there.

Items/Abilities: Never the volunteer for an idea, they turn others' words around. It is only tro survive, they say, pocketing the money from the bank, a "charitable donation" diverted from a rich man's slush fund; no one will miss it. The words turn and turn in their hands, and the world makes their way straight for them. They do not care for others' feelings on their introference much. They can always make you feel how they want. It is a kindness, in a way.

Biography: They had just come from the boneyards, where the interred came away as blocks of calcium. They had convinced the overseer to give them a cadaver, one he would never miss; the corpse would be a handy source of words like "dead", for a start, which they could leverage intro all sorts of handy situatrons.

Carrying the corpse, they came across a conversation, between two enigmatic bystanders. Strangely enough to an outsider but not to the Sertin, the corpse drew no notice, nor did Tro themself, not until they came between the two:

"So I said to the commissioner,"

"I know exactly what you mean."

"Oh, good morning, stranger-" A friendly wave.

"Is that a dead person?!" End of conversation.

Then, the turning. They grasped the sentences, rewording each turn of phrase around the vertices of where they wanted things to fo.

Description: Lissotriton Trahendum, as the name may imply, closely resembles Earth's newts at first glance, though it grows to iguanan proportions. One feature that sets it apart (other than its discovery on an expedition some six hundred light-years away from Earth) is the striking blue bioluminescence exhibited by the organism when it is agitated or otherwise exerting itself.

Lissotriton Trahendum is also noteworthy in that its social structure seems to be hive-based, vaguely analogous to Earth's beehives or ant colonies. In the gigantic rainforests of EI-2581-II they serve as a sort of pollinator, darting across the vast and thick canopy to gather nectar from the blooms that permeate the local foliage before returning to their colonies. The colonies themselves are built within trees, with Lissotriton Trahendum digging them out using purpose-suited claws. This does not seem to harm the trees themselves, so there may be some form of symbiosis at work.

They also seem to be omnivorous, as researchers have observed them making an occasional meal of (often chihuahua-sized) insects with their frog-like tongues and powerful jaws.

Weapons / Abilities: By far the most astonishing thing about Lissotriton Trahendum is its namesake, an innate ability to warp gravity in a localized area. When faced with imminent danger--whether in the form of an unwary foot, a steep fall or a pouncing predator--Lissotriton Trahendum gives off an extremely bright glow and emits a localized field about 1' in diameter that flips gravity turnways (Note: We need to come up with a better way to phrase this) in order to either divert the threatening object or jettison the organism itself out of harms' way. Researchers have begun to colloquially refer to it as a 'Twen' in a fit of unfortunate wordplay.

Though only observed once so far, it appears that when Lissotriton Trahendum is swarming and threatened, their fields amplify one another to encompass areas of up to 1 cubic kilometer. The swarm observed was comprised of around 50 organisms, and the area produced experienced g-forces sufficient to uproot any Earth forest.

Biography: Some goofball thought it'd be funny to stick 100 small-dog-sized gravity-fuckering burrowing salamanders into their battle as a contestant. They were right.

You know what would've really sold this theme? If I'd posted who won the awards before the profiles even got written. Failing that, here's how things'll be apportioned appropriate-after the fact:

Outroboros wins Arnold Fogge's Actually Practical Award, and also the Lucky VII All-Rounder Award thanks to the character's interesting power set, and a presented personality that immediately evokes how much fun this noodle will be on an intergalactic murderromp.

The Thomas Packston Elementalist Award is awarded to Drey Gan-f O'Gall. Invertebrates and twisted takes I anticipated, so "Gentleman shoved into a battle" was an entertaining direction.

Jacinta Caduceus wins the Glere Award For Kitchen Sinkery. It's also subverting the general concept of 8-folks-selected-for-a-battle, but 8-people-enter-8-or-no-people-live is exactly the kind of weird that suits the Kitchen Sinkery prize.

The Convolution Teamfriendliness Cup goes to Tro Sertin. Their power should make for some really good interactions, especially with a contract-bound demon and a centipede who can pull him into inverted realms where their words might end up even more sinister.

Finally, The Twens win the GBS2 Award For Gratuitous Worldbuilding because boy howdy do I love me some weird dogs

Also Jacinta wins the First Five Eighths prize. Why am I mentioning this now? Look into your hearts and you'll know why

Biography: Byrian Smytch only came into existence once the battle was announced and was created solely to participate in it. However, Byrian Smytch was created with an extensive false backstory, which any narrative entity other than Byrian Smytch's primary narrative entity can contribute to.

Description: Byrian Smytch is a bearded Ziverdorian Flyggwyath with a large sword.
Beyond that, Byrian Smytch has no predetermined personality or traits. All narrative entities other than Byrian Smytch's primary narrative entity may describe traits, which Byrian Smytch's primary narrative entity is bound to follow.

Weapons and Abilities: Byrian Smytch is competent with a sword. All other abilities are to be decided by narrative entities other than Byrian Smytch's primary narrative entity.
Byrian Smytch also has a significant weakness. If Byrian Smytch's primary narrative entity makes a spelling error, grammatical error, pronoun error, formatting error, or continuity error, Byrian Smytch will be immediately destroyed as soon as someone notices the error.
Byrian Smytch is wholly unaware of this weakness.
In addition, Byrian Smytch must be described as either Byrian Smytch or have the correct pronoun used in order to survive. Byrian Smytch's correct pronoun switches every time Byrian Smytch's primary narrative entity uses a pronoun.
Other narrative entities are not bound to Byrian Smytch's pronoun cycle. However, Byrian Smytch's primary narrative entity must follow up the most recent pronoun used to describe Byrian Smytch with the next pronoun in the cycle, or Byrian Smytch will immediatey perish.
In addition, when the actual battle begins, Byrian Smytch's primary narrative entity must use Byrian Smytch's name and race at least once per post, must use pronouns to describe Byrian Smytch at least twice per post, and must not refer to narrative entities. These restrictions do not apply to this profile.
Byrian Smytch's primary narrative entity must also use appropriate text colors and formatting for other characters with assigned colors. Again, any errors in color usage or formatting will result in Byrian Smytch's immediate death.

Biography: Peach grew from a peach tree in Iran, where peach trees are commonly grown, and was harvested from its tree late-summer. The omnipotent consciousness of the universe then decided to transport it to a different dimension for a brawl the likes of which the multiverse has never seen. Peach was indifferent about this because Peach is a peach.

Description: Peach is a peach with a fuzzy, orange-yellow outer layer, yellow flesh, and a radius of 3.5 centimetres. Peach smells tantalizingly good. Peach's seed is reddish-brown, oval-shaped and is 1.7 centimetres long. Peach is not sentient.

Weapons/Abilities: Peach cannot move, speak, or perform any action besides not doing anything at all as a peach. Peach's seed is extremely dense and cannot be ingested, digested, degraded, destroyed, be made part of any other thing or being or removed from all of existence. This property of Peach's seed is hereditary for all of Peach's offspring, should Peach's seed be planted in soil rich in nutrients, an area with moderate rainfall and chilled at a temperature between 0 and 10 degrees Celsius for approximately 500 hours, as would be required to cultivate any ordinary peach tree.